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via JoNova
May 29, 2025 at 09:37AM
Can we finally forget about this already much-debunked modelling-based climate scare now? Its repetition ad nauseam has become tedious over the last few years. Researcher: “Our results imply that, rather than a substantial decline, the AMOC is more likely to experience a limited decline over the 21st century—still some weakening, but less drastic than previous projections suggest.”
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The Atlantic meridional overturning circulation, commonly referred to as the “AMOC,” is a system of ocean currents confined to the Atlantic basin that plays a crucial role in regulating Earth’s climate by transporting heat from the Southern to the Northern Hemisphere, says Caltech @ Eurekalert.
The AMOC also modulates regional weather, from the mild summers in Europe to the monsoon seasons in Africa and India. Climate models have long predicted that global warming will cause the AMOC to weaken, with some projecting substantial weakening amounting to a near-collapse relative to the AMOC’s strength today.
Such a weakening would have far-reaching consequences, including changes in regional sea level rise and major shifts in regional climate, such as colder conditions in northern Europe and drier weather in parts of the Amazon and West Africa.
However, a new study from Caltech finds that although the AMOC will weaken under global warming, it is likely to do so to a much lesser extent than current projections suggest.
The team developed a simplified physical model based on fundamental principles of ocean circulation—specifically, how density differences and the AMOC’s depth are related—that also incorporates real-world measurements of the ocean current’s strength, collected over 20 years through the use of monitoring arrays and other observationally constrained products of the Atlantic basin.
The researchers found that the AMOC will weaken by around 18 to 43 percent at the end of the 21st century. While this does represent some weakening, it does not represent substantial weakening that the more extreme climate model projections [Talkshop comment – we don’t need those] suggest.
This new understanding significantly narrows the range of future AMOC weakening, addressing a long-standing uncertainty in climate science.
The study is described in a paper appearing in the journal Nature Geoscience.
. . .
The study suggests that much of the previous uncertainty and some of the more extreme AMOC weakening projections stemmed from biases in how climate models simulate the ocean’s current state, particularly its density stratification.
“Our results imply that, rather than a substantial decline, the AMOC is more likely to experience a limited decline over the 21st century—still some weakening, but less drastic than previous projections suggest,” [lead researcher] Dave Bonan says.
Full article here.
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Image credit: NASA – GISS
via Tallbloke’s Talkshop
May 29, 2025 at 09:16AM
Audrey Streb
DCNF Energy Reporter
A General Motors (GM) plant in New York previously intended to build electric vehicle (EV) parts is pivoting to manufacture new V-8 engines as the GOP dismantles the Biden administration’s de facto EV mandate, according to Reuters.
GM is investing $888 million into its Tonawanda Propulsion plant to support its new generation of V-8 internal combustion engines that will be used in trucks and SUVs, a shift from its EV investment plans for the facility announced as the Biden administration worked to gradually phase out gas-powered cars, the company announced on Tuesday. The Senate blew up a key plank of the Democrats’ EV agenda when it repealed waivers enabling California’s de facto national EV mandate on May 22, and the Trump administration is also moving to roll back Biden-era regulations and subsidies designed to push EVs on American consumers.
“Our significant investments in GM’s Tonawanda Propulsion plant show our commitment to strengthening American manufacturing and supporting jobs in the U.S.,” said Mary Barra, Chair and CEO. “GM’s Buffalo plant has been in operation for 87 years and is continuing to innovate the engines we build there to make them more fuel efficient and higher performing, which will help us deliver world-class trucks and SUVs to our customers for years to come.” (RELATED: Musk-Hating California Liberals Accidentally Undermining Golden State’s EV Mandate)
“[The investment] marks the largest single investment the company has ever made in an engine plant and makes Tonawanda the second GM propulsion plant to produce this new generation of engines,” GM’s statement added.
GM announced a commitment to invest $300 million to manufacture EV drive units at the facility in November 2023, though production has not started there to date, according to Reuters. Barra previously stated in December 2023 that the company aims to exclusively sell electric light-duty vehicles by 2035 in line with state and federal policies, though she also noted that GM will “be responsive to where the customer is,” Reuters reported at the time.
GM lobbied the Senate to repeal the federal waivers enabling California’s Advanced Clean Cars II vehicle emissions rules, according to Reuters. Beyond the Senate’s recent efforts to attack the EV agenda, the Trump Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Department of Transportation have each moved to end Biden-era regulations that would effectively require automakers to produce an increasing share of electric vehicles over time.
Though Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul has supported the expansion of EV technology in her state, her office celebrated this investment on Tuesday.
“Today’s $888 million investment is great news for the hundreds of workers at the plant and builds on New York’s manufacturing legacy by providing world-class products to the global market,” Hochul said in a statement. “I look forward to seeing New York’s partnership with GM bring the next generation of automotive technology to its Tonawanda plant and I thank them for their tremendous support and belief in Western New York.”
Notably, New York announced a two-year suspension of penalties for failing to meet EV targets last week, according to Reuters.
GM and Hochul’s office did not respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s requests for comment.
All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.
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via Watts Up With That?
May 29, 2025 at 08:02AM
Not the latest model
The EV ‘transition’ is on the skids in the US since the last President left the stage. What effect this might have in other countries remains to be seen. If political parties opposed to compulsory EVs get the upper hand, does the whole motor industry change tack? The author claims the earlier EVs were undermined by politics, but car buyers were making their own choices. Today choice is being taken away in many places, like the UK and much of Europe. The NYT claims the motor vehicle ‘has been a major cause of climate change’, but offers no evidence.
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Battery-operated vehicles were a mainstay more than a hundred years ago, but only a few still exist — one happens to be in Jay Leno’s garage. By Ivan Penn – BURBANK, Calif. for the NYT (New York Times, via Climate Depot).
– More than a century before Tesla rolled out its first cars, the Baker Electric Coupe and the Riker Electric Roadster rumbled down American streets.
Battery-powered cars were so popular that, for a time, about a third of New York’s taxis were electric.
But those early electric vehicles began to lose ground to a new class of cars, like the Ford Model T, that were cheaper and could more easily be refueled by new oil-based fuels that were becoming available around the country. Bolstered by federal tax incentives in the 1920s, the oil industry boomed – and so did gasoline-powered cars.
That history has largely been forgotten, and almost all of the early electric cars have disappeared so completely that most people alive today have never seen one – and many have no idea that they even existed. A few specimens are in museums and private collections, including a fully restored Baker Electric that Jay Leno keeps in his sprawling California garage.
Leno’s ancient electric car has a wooden frame and 36-inch rubber wheels. It looks like a stagecoach, but it is propelled by electric motors and batteries just like a current-day Tesla Model Y or Cadillac Lyriq. It elicited smiles and amazement from people on the streets of Burbank, California, when Leno drove it around town recently.
The car may be a novelty, but it is newly relevant because the United States may be poised to repeat history.
The Trump administration and Republicans in Congress are working to undercut the growth of electric vehicles, impose a new tax on them and swing federal policy sharply in favor of oil and gasoline.
Scholars who have studied the earlier age of electric vehicles see parallels in their demise in the early decades of the 1900s and the attacks they are facing now. In both eras, electric cars struggled to gain acceptance in the marketplace and were undermined by politics. A big knock against them was they had to be charged and ultimately were considered less convenient than vehicles with internal combustion engines.
“Electric cars are good if you have a towing company,” President Donald Trump said at a campaign rally in Iowa in October 2023. At another appearance the next month, he said, “You can’t get out of New Hampshire in an electric car.”
Charging and access to fuel were also concerns a century earlier.
Full article here.
via Tallbloke’s Talkshop
May 29, 2025 at 06:46AM
Iowa Climate Science Education 